Théodore Nisard
Theodule Eleazar Xavier Normand (27 January 1812 – 29 February 1888), better known by his pen name Théodore Nisard, was a French clergyman, organist, and musicologist.
Biography
Nisard received his first musical instruction in his hometown, then studied at Cambrai before entering the seminary at Tournai, where he was ordained a priest in 1835. In 1839, he was appointed director of the English Gymnasium and then in 1842 titular organist of the church of St. Germain-des-Prés in Paris, but he also held this post for only a short time, as he decided to devote more time to musicological research.
His works on music history deal for the most part with the development of music, especially in the Middle Ages and in particular with questions concerning Gregorian chant. He also wrote remarkable articles in Joseph d'Ortigue's musical dictionary, among others on Gregorian chant and its rhythm, and vehemently opposed the new edition of the Medicaea by the Regensburg publishing house Pustet. He also joined the chorale society of Michael Hermesdorff, director of the cathedral music in Trier, who had made it his task to restore the original melodic version of the Gregorian chant through comparisons of medieval codices and thus did the most important preparatory work for the restitution of the chorale in the German-speaking world.
In addition to these treatises, he wrote monographs on Odo of Cluny, Palestrina, Lully, Rameau, Abbé Vogler, and others.
He died at Amponville in the Seine-et-Marne department.
Works
- Du Catholicisme et du Libéralisme (1841; published under his own name)
- Examen Critique des Chants de la Sainte-Chapelle (1850)
- Du Rythme dans le Plain-chant (1856)
- Notice sur l'Antiphonaire Bilingue de Montpellier (1864)
- L'archéologie Musicale et le Vrai Chant Grégorien (1890)
